'Govt does not run on Facebook Live': Eknath Shinde attacks Uddhav Thackeray, levels big charge against MVA

Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena supremo Eknath Shinde on Sunday launched a frontal attack on Shiv Sena (UBT) chief and his former boss Uddhav Thackeray. While attacking Thackeray, he said that government or state do not run from home or social media. 

Shinde said that a government works by communicating face-to-face with people. To substantiate his point further, he referred to Thackeray's term as Chief Minister of Maharashtra during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Taking shots at the Shiv Sena (UBT) chief, Shinde said in an exclusive interaction with newswire ANI: "The thing is, I have worked with them and I know everything, When there was COVID, we used to work and go to hospitals with PPE kits. You should also find out about the work of the Chief Minister during two and a half years of tenure. The government and state does not run from home. It does not run on Facebook Live."

Further, he claimed that Thackeray's family members also started interfering with governance work, which he thought wasn't fair and complained against. Shinde mentioned that instead of acting on these complaints, Uddhav behaved strangely. 

"Even, I told him that he should tell me about work, but I don't know what happened to him and after some days, he started behaving strangely, I was saddened by it. I don't know what was in his mind," the Maharashtra CM said. 

He also accused the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) of planning to arrest the now Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis when Uddhav Thackeray was the Chief Minister. As per Shinde, this could have put the BJP on the backfoot and their MLAs could have potentially joined the MVA bloc. 

He added that the MVA government also planned to put him behind bars when he objected to their plans of getting Fadnavis arrested, citing it as wrongdoing. 

Shinde mentioned: "Citing it as wrongdoing, when I objected, they said there is nothing wrong in it, this is all right. They had troubled us, so, we have to do all this and we will do it. It was a case of urban land selling. They planned to implicate me as well in that case."

He said that he had his doubts when he heard about this from some officers but got to know of their full planning only when he became the Maharashtra CM. 

Earlier this month, former Mumbai Police Commissioner Parambir Singh alleged that the MVA government wanted to arrest Fadnavis and Shinde in a case of urban land selling. Singh also claimed that a senior police official was getting instructions from Thackeray and NCP leaders Sharad Pawar and Anil Deshmukh.